United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We have the best assortment of cyclopaedias in seven states, and the Public Library is only two blocks off. It is no wonder, therefore, that our erudition and our research are of the highest order. Still it is not practicable that we, being now on earth, should devote much time to delving into, and wallowing among, the authors of past centuries.
Overtop referred to the standard Cyclopaedias, and several works on Natural History, in proof of his assertion. "Can't be! can't be!" retorted Wesley Tiffles, who was at first disposed to defend his brilliant idea. But brilliant ideas were a common growth of his fertile mind, and, like all things easily produced, he held them cheaply.
The great collections of biography, with separate lives of all noted characters, should be provided. Dictionaries, cyclopaedias, statistical annuals, and other books of reference will be needed in abundance. A small but select number of approved works in law, medicine, and theology should be embraced in the library.
What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old edition of the "Court Guide."
There was a shelf of theology and missionary records, doubtless collected when he was a minister; many shelves of medical books, and a small number of miscellaneous works, histories and cyclopaedias. Among these latter I chanced one day to take down Whelpley's Compend of History.
What a modern talks of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough, salable, curious, good for propelling steamships! With our Sciences and Cyclopaedias, we are apt to forget the divineness, in those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it!
No book, however, has yet been discovered bearing the name of Gutenberg; and we can only guess what came from his press by a peculiarity of type, of which, after the first Bible, the most marked is the famous Catholicon, dated 1460 a kind of universal dictionary, the germ of all future cyclopaedias, and which became so popular that more than forty editions were printed of it in as many years.
What a boy turns out for himself, as he rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and pleasure. My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the proceedings of learned societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopaedias, physical science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything really legible existed as by accident.
Lady Burton does not even mention Rehatsek's name, and cyclopaedias are silent concerning him; yet he was one of the most remarkable men of his time, and henceforward Burton was in constant communication with him.
What a modern talks-of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Nature; and does not figure as a divine thing; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine enough, saleable, curious, good for propelling steamships! With our Sciences and Cyclopaedias, we are apt to forget the divineness, in those laboratories of ours. We ought not to forget it!
Word Of The Day